Slogan

[ShalokShalom]

I suggest some Slogans, you are invited to add some ideas too: 🙂

•) Elm for the backend
•) Mini-Haskell on the ErlangVM

Both are fine for Google hits 😉

[wende]

It used to be 'Elm for the backend' but Evan asked me to change it. Mini haskell on Erlang VM on the other hand has a problematic Implication that Elchemy is as hard as Haskell (which is by rumor improperly called the hardest of all languages)

[ShalokShalom]

ML on the Beam

[OvermindDL1]

(which is by rumor improperly called the hardest of all languages)

That might be some FPGA languages! :-V

[ShalokShalom]

Which is Haskell too:

http://www.clash-lang.org/
http://christiaanb.github.io/posts/clash-fpga-starter/

[dstpierre]

I will add my personal reason for finding Elchemy interesting. I never was able to like Ruby, and when Elixir popped, I was not able to "like" it as well, maybe I'm not trying hard enough, but there's something I cannot seems to overcome with the syntax.

I moved on Go instead 4 years ago, but I wanted to get started with FP. And recently discovered Elm which I'm digging at the moment.

So for me, Elchemy is really "Expressive Elixir" or something like that. Straight, digestable, it just make sense without fluff.

[ShalokShalom]

Oh hi, nice that you found my comment interesting ^-^

Hello to the community :D

And thanks for your feedback, we appreciate it.

I find Elixir is one of the most readable intermediate languages, since I discover Elchemy ;) :P

[OvermindDL1]

@dstpierre I entirely agree about the syntax, however Elixir does have the fantastic BEAM VM underneath it, and it has one of the best macro systems out short of Lisp (the AST is simple 3-tuples), combined with it's excellent tooling I'm able to overlook 'most' of the syntax annoyances. ^.^;

Elchemy does not have macro's, though it is entirely possible for @wende to add them, it would not actually be that hard as the BEAM VM makes it pretty easy. :-)

[wende]

@dstpierre First of all welcome to the community and thanks for reaching out!

Yes, for me as well the biggest two advantages of Elm for BEAM would be the type-safety and the expressiveness of the language (List.foldl (+) 0 list sounds way nicer to me than
List.foldl(list, 0, fn a, acc -> a + acc end)

I'm definitely sure about wanting to avoid any comparisons to Haskell. Although I respect it a lot as a language we should learn from it on how you're not supposed to create a community and a general brand of a language, because for me personally the first word that comes to my head when hearing Haskell is "scary"

What I was going for from the start was 'type-safe Elixir' but after many trials and failures it turned out reusing some other language is a much better choice.
'type-safe expressive Elixir' resonates with me, definitely.

[ShalokShalom]

Well, you are probably right about Haskell, while I guess a significant part about the concerns that people see with Haskell, is based on their error messages.

All those new concepts of Haskell are for somebody who comes from a very different language are difficult enough to grasp on their own and when the messages of the compiler actually confuse you even more instead of clearing up the situation, does this turn the game completely, imho.

Another point is surely how they communicate with people from outside of their community, I completely agree about this one as well.

And yes, all those assumptions might get projected onto Elchemy as well, if we name it something like Simple Haskell, while I also see great potential since that is exactly what a lot of people want.

Like me. 😄

I think, what people also assume with Haskell is its great power and expressiveness, as well as elegance and pure functional programming, so quite some things who fit Elchemy perfectly fine.

I think we can conclude that the concise and effective syntax of Elm in combination with the Beam is one of the major benefits in Elchemy, which makes 'Elm on the Beam' quite convenient, while this seems like blocked by Evan.

To be honest, I am a bit wondering about this, since he self argued that one day may come an Elm backend for the server side and people are welcome to code it.

So, he maybe wants to ensure, that his baby does get mentally connected to other projects once it is obvious that it contributes positive to its distinction.

@wende When did Evan ask you to change the slogan and did he say why?

Is he open for a new discussion today?
And potentially for a cooperation?

A lot of different compiler share one home, such as the different ones in Ceylon, Kotlin and Clojure.

It seems obvious that this has a couple of benefits for Elm and Elchemy too?

[OvermindDL1]

'type-safe expressive Elixir' resonates with me, definitely.

I really should work on this playground more someday... ^.^;

https://github.com/overminddl1/typed_elixir/

When did Evan ask you to change the slogan and did he say why?

He said it on the mailing list or reddit or something like that, and the reasons were basically that he worried about elmchemy being related/connected to elm (which... it is...).

[ShalokShalom]

Well, I am aware about that, while I am more interested about the specific why.

[wende]

@ShalokShalom
There's the discussion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/elm/comments/6f8062/elmchemy_typesafe_elixir_code_with_elms_syntax/

There was also a video call discussion with me and Evan, but given it was one year ago I don't want to challenge my memory on quoting that.